With Malice (4 page)

“I want to ask you about the accident,” he said.

“Are you the physiotherapist?” I asked. I tore the wrapper open. The smell of the chocolate was enough to make me sigh with pleasure. I took a big bite.

“I'm your lawyer, Evan Stanley.”

The bite of candy bar stuck in my throat and seemed to swell. I forced it down. “Lawyer?”

“I want to get your statement about what happened. While things are still fresh in your mind.”

“I don't know,” I hedged. The hair on the back of my neck lifted like antennae reading the signals in the air.

“I know it's hard, but this situation isn't going to go away on its own. We'll have to talk sometime.”

I stared at him blankly. What situation was he talking about?

“What are you doing?” Tish said, grabbing the handles of my wheelchair and lurching me back so that I almost fell forward. She glared at Evan. “She's barely twenty-four hours postsurgery. She is not up to answering questions, and she certainly shouldn't be doing it without her mother present.”

He raised both hands as if he were surrendering. “I just took a chance stopping by and ran into Miss Charron. I thought I'd see if she was ready to talk. I'm not the enemy here. Her father hired me to watch out for her interests.”

Tish pushed me back toward my room. She was mad at him, but I felt like I was the one who had screwed up. “That's fine, but I still don't think you should be talking to her without one of her parents with her.”

“The young lady is eighteen,” Mr. Stanley said.

I decided he was no longer good-looking. Now I wanted to get far away from him. I wished I'd never left my room. The chocolate bar in my hand was starting to melt. The smell of the waxy chocolate with sticky-sweet coconut was making me nauseated. I didn't want it anymore, but there was no place to put it. Dropping it on the floor seemed rude, so I was stuck holding it as it began to ooze.

“We don't have a lot of time to waste. That girl's parents are demanding answers, and we're going to want to get in front of the story,” Mr. Stanley said.

My hands grabbed the wheels of the chair and brought it to a hard stop. The muscles in my shoulder felt as though they were tearing free from the bone. I stared up at him. His face was expressionless. I told myself I was being ridiculous—the accident had happened in Italy.

“What girl?” I whispered.

He raised his eyebrows as if he couldn't figure out why I was playing dumb. “You know anyone else who died in the accident? Who else would it be? Simone McIvory.”

Everyone was treating me as if at any moment I might explode into a thousand shards. Evan Stanley kept apologizing over and over, but I ignored him. I couldn't believe I'd thought he was attractive, even for an instant. The sight of him made me want to hurl. After Tish banished him from my room, she tipped the blinds so it was half lit and tucked me back into bed. The hospital staff slipped in and out of my room to do what they had to, but mostly they left me alone. I knew everyone expected me to be crushed and crying my eyes out.

I wasn't.

When I was around eight, I saw the movie
Dumbo.
A theater in town was showing it on the big screen, and my parents had taken me as a treat. It made me sob uncontrollably. I cried until I threw up, thinking about how unfair it all was. How Dumbo was alone and how everyone made fun of him. How his mother was locked up for just trying to help. For weeks after seeing the movie, I'd start crying if I saw anything that reminded me of the story. I couldn't eat animal crackers without breaking down. My mom decided I was too sensitive for Disney. She was pretty sure seeing
Bambi
would kill me. It wasn't until my dad left that I learned that there are more painful things than cartoon animals having a bad day, but crying about those doesn't change reality either.

I lay in the hospital bed and stared up at the ceiling. In the far right corner, there was a tiny water stain shaped like an elephant. I'd been focusing on it, willing myself to let go, but everything inside me was locked in place.

Simone's dead.

Dead.

Gone.

Passed away.

I could even say it in French, thanks to the two-year language requirement at our school.
Simone est morte.
It didn't matter how I said it. The words just rolled around in my head like pool balls bouncing off the sides of the table, nothing sinking.

Simone couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible, like saying the sun was blue or that fish lived in the desert. Simone couldn't be dead, because she was my best friend. We'd been friends since fourth grade. When we were ten, she fell off her bike and broke her arm, and I rode her all the way home on the back of my red Schwinn. She was the one who walked me through how to get a tampon in the first time and calmed me down when I was pretty sure I'd somehow managed to lose it up inside myself. She was who I told when I had my first kiss, and I was the only one who knew her dad had affairs and her mom put up with them. When my parents said they were getting divorced, Simone came over that night and held me while I cried. We were closer than sisters. We hung out with other people, but they were just extras. We were the core.

I couldn't imagine my life without Simone in it. Of the two of us, Simone was the fun one. She made everything a party. Simone was Batman, I was Robin. Simone was Shrek, I was Donkey. Simone was Sherlock, I was Watson. The truth is no one wants Robin without Batman.

I could hardly remember a time before we were best friends. The idea that she was gone was incomprehensible and terrifying. I couldn't fathom why she had even been in Italy. The trip had been expensive, and her parents didn't have the money to send her. What had she been doing there?

The door squeaked open. “Jill?” My mom's voice was tentative, as if she was afraid of me. Tish must have called. My dad was behind her. This was enough of a crisis that it merited even his attention.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I kept staring at the ceiling. They'd let me believe she was alive. They'd lied.

“We were going to,” Mom said.

“When?”

She touched my arm, and I yanked it away, sending a fresh spasm of pain into my shoulder. Mom sighed. “We didn't want to overwhelm you with too much, too fast.”

“I was driving, wasn't I?” I asked.

“Yes,” my dad said.

My stomach dropped. I'd known in my heart I must have been the driver, but I'd still wanted them to tell me something different. That explained why there was a lawyer involved. Now it wasn't just that Simone was gone; it was that somehow this was my fault. Maybe her family was going to sue me.

“What happened?” I picked at the blanket. I'd worked free a loose thread and wound it tightly around my finger, feeling the tip go cold and bloodless.

“Have you remembered any more about the accident?” Mom asked.

“If I remembered, I wouldn't have to—” The word disappeared. I grunted in frustration and hit the rail of the bed with my fist. I wanted to force the word out, but it wouldn't come. I raised my arm again.

“Easy.” She put her hand on the rail, and before I could stop myself, my fist slammed down onto hers. She sucked in a gasp, yanking her hand back.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Guilt pressed down on my chest.

Mom had her hand cradled in her lap. “It's fine.”

“This is why you didn't want me to have a TV,” I said, putting the pieces together.

“There's been a bit about the accident on the news.” She twisted her hands together in her lap.

“Why was I driving in Italy?”

“We don't know,” Dad said. “The program doesn't let kids drive over there. We're not even sure how you got the car. Supposedly it was a rental car some idiot left the keys in. That was something we hoped you might remember, how it came to happen. You lost control. It went over a city wall.”

His words didn't bring any images into my head. There was still a blank space where the past weeks had been. How could I forget something like that? The clock ticked on the wall. Each second moving from the present to the past. Moving Simone farther away.

I finally asked, “Was I drunk?”

“No, of course not.” My mom sounded horrified, which made me feel better. “They tested you when you were admitted to the hospital in Italy. They don't know why the accident happened.” Her voice was strained, and I realized she was trying not to cry.

I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but both of us knew that was a lie. This was something that couldn't be fixed. Sure, my leg would get better, and I'd get out of the hospital, the cuts would heal—but Simone would still be dead. I felt dizzy. This had never happened to me before. Something bad that couldn't be undone. The permanence of it made me angry.

“I want to go to Simone's funeral,” I said. Suddenly the decision seemed crystal clear. I pulled myself up in bed. It felt good to have a purpose. “I need to go.” I was her friend; everyone would expect me to be there. I owed her that. I needed to say goodbye.

“Sweetie, the funeral is planned for tomorrow. You're not ready—”

I cut her off. “I'm her best friend. I have to go.” I didn't care how bad I felt. In fact, I wanted to feel bad. I needed to sit at the funeral with every bone in my body throbbing in pain. Mentally I started going through my closet to figure out what I could wear that would go over the cast on my leg. I wondered if Simone's parents would let me say anything, and if they did, what could I say that would be worthy of Simone? She deserved a speech that was more than a regurgitated song lyric or bad poem. “You have to talk to Dr. Ruckman,” I said. “Tell him I need to go.”

“It's not that,” she said. She took a deep breath, as if she were about to dive into a deep icy pool.

“Simone's family doesn't want us there,” Dad said.

His words were like a slap in the face. “Oh.” It wasn't that they didn't want us there; they didn't want
me
there.

“I called her parents. They hung up on me,” I said. My heart folded in on itself, getting smaller and harder.

My parents exchanged a look. “They're struggling,” Mom said. “They'll come around. You're family to them the same way Simone was a daughter to us.” Her voice caught and she started to cry.

I watched the tears fall from her eyes and waited for my own eyes to water, but I still couldn't believe it. Or I didn't want to believe it. There was no one in the world I was closer to than Simone. In eighth grade, Richard Slater started a rumor that Simone and I were lesbians. I'd gotten upset, but it rolled off Simone's back. She said he was jealous that no one loved him even a fraction of the amount she cared for me. That her love for me went beyond sex, that our friendship was stronger than any guy. Simone said we were a part of each other. Like Siamese twins who share a heart and can't ever be separated or one would die.

I looked back up at the ceiling and searched out the small elephant. I pictured his trunk curled around a feather. He believed that the feather was magic and made it possible for him to fly.

I don't believe in magic.

Simone's gone.

I started to cry.

My dad stood there looking uncomfortable with all the tears. He grabbed a box of tissues from the windowsill and passed them over to my mom and me. They were a hospital industrial brand and felt rough and harsh on my skin.

“It's a tragedy, but that's all it is. I'm not going to let her family turn this into some kind of drama,” he said.

“Keith,” my mom said.

My dad had never liked Simone or her family. The truth is he's a snob. He didn't like that her mom was a cashier at the grocery store and her dad sold cars. Like it reflected badly on him that I didn't have a Hilton or a Rockefeller as a best friend. My dad didn't see the point in a relationship unless he could get something from it. My mom had learned that lesson the hard way.

“All I'm saying is that Evan doesn't think we should have anything to do with their family until this is all resolved,” Dad said.

I felt a flare of annoyance. “Do we really need a lawyer?”

My parents traded glances again, and the uneasy feeling in my belly grew heavier. I was having a stress baby.

My mom patted my shoulder.

Dad tucked his shirt into his pants with sharp jabs. “We're making sure that we look out for you. You need to be able to focus on getting better, not jetting back off to Italy so that a bunch of trumped-up know-it-alls can feel important.”

My headache increased. “Italy?”

“The police there have to figure out what happened in the accident. They want to ask you some questions.”

I sat up straighter. “I should go.” This was something I could do. “If I can help in any way, then I should do that.”

“Sweetheart, I don't think it's a good idea. You've just had surgery. You still have a lot of recovery ahead of you.”

“I wasn't planning to fly out tomorrow,” I said. “But we can talk to Dr. Ruckman, maybe let the Italian police know I could come in a week or two.” An idea popped into my head. “Or we could do an interview on—” The word zapped out of my head. “The computer thing, the online talking.”

Mom's forehead was scrunched up as she tried to figure out what I meant. I wanted to push the word out, but it was stuck somewhere in my brain, I could picture the swooshing S logo on my laptop and the burbling sound it made when it fired up, but the name was gone.

“This is ridiculous. You're not talking to the police. This is why we have a lawyer. If we have any information, then Evan will pass it on to them,” my dad said.

“But if there is anything I can do to help them figure out what happened with Simone, I need to do that.”